I absolutely love Slacker as a service, but customer support has been less than responsive to me, personally. I'm not sure how many others have experienced this, but I will give a bit of background.

About 2.5 weeks ago, I sent in my Slacker G2, because the Home button had failed, most likely due to button fatigue. When you make as many units as Slacker does, you are bound to have a few bad apples, right? So, I got an RMA from Slacker support (on Jan 23) and decided to ship it back Monday the 26th, Fedex ground. Knowing that it was going to take a week to get there, and that it was going to cost a boatload to upgrade shipping. They got it by the last business day of Jan (30th). So, knowing that they said it could take 3-5 business days to get to me, I decided to not bother them about it until at least day number 3.

So, last Wednesday I emailed them to check on the status. Thursday, 24 hours later, they did finally get back to me to inform me that they couldn't find my package. So, immediately, I forwarded tracking information and proof of delivery, and I was told that they would get back to me on Friday. OK, I can deal with that, stuff happens.

Friday afternoon, around 3PM, I hadn't heard back from them yet, and emailed looking for another status update. It's Tuesday morning, and I have yet to hear back on whether they found the unit.

Now granted, I'm sure this will get resolved somehow, its just a bit irritating to have to deal with what I now deem to be poor customer serivce at best. If the folks at Slacker are reading this, I encourage them to look into this. I feel I have been patient, and worry that the average person just getting introduced to their service will be a bit more wary than I have been regarding this.

Like I have stated, I LOVE the service, but this is starting to put a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It's been in their possession now for over a week, and no response for a bit over two business days looks a bit bad.

OK, rant over, just thought I would vent a bit.

I think I would get online and ask for some information via the Online Chat Support. Not sure if they will be anymore helpful, but it is certainly worth a shot. You know they do have a phone number as I've seen it posted that you can call as well. They don't like giving out that number, but I have seen it around.

I know I have done the Online Chat Support a couple of times. One time I got FrankS which was pretty helpful. The next time I got CharlesB and my question to him I was trying to find out if there was anyway I could switch from the Premium to the Plus and just use the funds that I have with no refund. His response basically was that I knew what I was purchasing when I purchased the Premium and basically there was nothing he could do and I'd just have to deal with it. I told him I'd like to suggest that they at least consider allowing folks to switch. He gave me this big scenario about people buying cars and how they change and he would not be allowed to bring his car back. Like a service compares to buying a car to begin with. He was very defensive in his position. Rather than just say he was sorry right now the policy was they were not allowing folks to change their subscriptions, but he would pass along the request. No, he was very quick to defend his decision. I at the time had a trial plus sub pending on a G1 which I immediately canceled. I also had given some trial subs away to others which I had planned to upgrade for them and I canceled those too. This guy does not need to be working in customer service in my opinion. I know others that have gotten him and he avoids answering the questions, he responses are less than adequate and he just leaves one feeling that their support isn't very good.

Overall I think their support is pretty good. Clearly your experience is a bit unusual, but it does seem like it takes them way too long to do hardware exchanges. They should have already responded to you and let you know your status for sure. There is no excuse for that lack of communication.

Right, and all I am really frustrated about is the lack of communication. The length on the hardware exchange is also frustrating, but again if this was communicated to me, it would suck but be a bit easier to deal with.

I just really hope that they get these issues resolved, because the service has a LOT of potential. It could just be growing pains too, but again, this could be detremental to the company if not properly dealt with.

Remember, most of your customers don't complain, they just leave. If I wasn't so passionate about the service, I wouldn't be saying anything right now, and I'd probably just decide to go. But I AM passionate about it, so I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Thanks for your suggestion on using Live chat. I might give that a shot this afternoon if I still haven't heard back via email.

I bought this unit at Best Buy, and I'm really kicking myself for not buying the extended warranty. for $30, I could have been back up and running the day the button failed. D'Oh. Lesson learned I suppose.

Maybe since we are all refugees from SirusXM they think we expect it

Its good (well not so good for MNX) to read about other services having simular CSR issues as Sirius XM. When customer support goes to the lowest bidder, this is the support we all wind up with.

__________________
XM subscriber since 2005/12/05:

• Pioneer Airware (LIFE, wife)
• Tao (son)
• OnyX (daughter)
• Pontiac G5 (XM Canada)

Sirius subscriber since 2007/12/06:

• Stilletto 2 (LIFE)
• Premium Internet
• TTR1

Creative Labs 32Gb Zen owner since 2009/02/02
Slacker Plus subscriber since 2010/01/15
Apple Black iPhone4 32Gb (iOS 5.1.1) owner 2010/08/16 --> 2012/08/25
Apple Black iPhone5 64Gb (iOS 6.1.3) owner since 2012/10/03
Apple White iPhone5 32Gb (WIFE) owner since 2012/12/14

To be fair, I am not sure that is the same issue. Sirius is trying to do things on the cheap by outsourcing to other countries. With Slacker, I think what I am experiencing is "growing pains". It seems to me (and this might not be accurate) that they have 3 customer service people over at Slacker, and I'm sure that they are experiencing an influx of subscribers due to Sirius music programming being inferior in almost every way (there are exceptions) to what was offered on XM.

I spoke to Charles over at Slacker via livechat this morning, and it was very pleasant. Only waited about 10 minutes for a response, and he escalated my issue. It's not resolved yet, but maybe livechat is the way to go over email.

I have no reason to believe that support is outsourced at Slacker, just that they are being cautious about spending money on staff at this point in the game. (maybe Sirius could learn a few things lol). I have seen, via the forums, that support, including the person I dealt with over email, has responded at all hours of the day and night, so I am def cutting them some slack.

Argh, ok, this is frustrating. I finally got my new (I'm assuming factory reconditioned, but it had all the stickers on it) Slacker G2 yesterday. I was SO psyched to finally have one back. I open the box, take it out, and immediately notice that not only does the home button not work, but the scroll wheel does not scroll or click. I would have been better off keeping the one I had!

So now its back to customer service. I can only assume it will take them a few days to get back in touch with me, and then another 3 weeks to send me yet another unit after I spend another $20 to ship it back to them.

This service is amazing, the unit revolutionary. But if your going to buy one, get it from Best Buy and get an extended warranty. $35 would have been SO much better than the aggrevation I'm going to have to deal with by the time I get one that works, should that ever happen.

Damn man, I am hate it that you are having to go through this. How could this happen, I mean they are suppose to be sending you a working replacement. Who is testing these things out? Clearly someone dropped the ball on this big time.

I know you must be really frustrated, but clearly I can tell how much you enjoy the service.

ben@consumerist.com

Yeah, its really disappointing. As I said, I was really looking forward to getting it back, so I could load it with a few new stations and bring it with me to work on Monday.

I guess that's what amazes me the most about this whole thing, that nobody bothered to even open up the unit to verify that it was a working replacement. I can load my own stations, that's not an issue. But it clearly is a non-funtioning unit, and trying to spin the click-wheel or press the home button quickly reveals something is wrong.

What frustrates me, rather than outright angers me (but it's getting close to the anger part), is that I DO love the service so much, and I want nothing more than the sucess of this new platform. How many people who are indifferent on the service get a defective unit and just go "eh, I guess it's not ready yet" and dismiss the service for what is tried and true (an iPod or iPhone). This is clearly the best delivery method for internet radio, yet to say the execution is poor would be sugarcoating it.

Oh well, we'll see how long the replacement takes this time. If it's too long, I might just sell the unit on eBay when it gets here and go back to the drawing board. It's getting close to that point that I have to ask myself whether entertainment should be this frustrating.